For example, this year Spokane has suffered a dramatic sequence of berserk driving. Every two weeks or so, a young dickhead zooms off a curve and smashes into a house or power pole at 100 MPH. Previously this happened twice a year, not twice a month. Several of these crashes were known to involve 4loko.

After a whole party of college kids got close to death, Wash gov Gregoire decided to ban the product. A similar event happened in North Carolina.

I hadn't thought about the subject until today. (Writing about a subject tends to clear it from memory.)

During a small thunderstorm this afternoon, a lightning flash made the power blink for a moment. This got me thinking: What happened to all those outages last year? Despite lots of wind, snow, Donnergraupel, and other nasty stuff, there hasn't been a real outage in 2011, because no dickheads have flown into poles in 2011!

I'd say the 4loko ban has worked admirably. Saved lots of expense for homeowners and utilities, probably saved a few dickhead lives. Good for Gregoire!

A few minutes later: Turns out the power blink here echoed a major outage in the downtown area, which was sort of storm-related but not lightning. A wind gust blew a trampoline from a yard onto the main transformers at Avista, shorting out a large part of town.

About Me

Polistra was named after the original townsite of Manhattan (the one in Kansas). When I was growing up in Manhattan, I spent a lot of time exploring by foot, bike, and car. I discovered the ruins of an old mill along Wildcat Creek, and decided (inaccurately) that it was the remains of the original site of Polistra. Accurate or not, I've always liked the name, with its echoes of Poland (an under-appreciated friend of freedom) and stars. ==== The title icon is explained here. ==== Switchover: This 2007 entry marks a sharp change in worldview from neocon to pure populist. ===== The long illustrated story of Polistra's Dream is a time-travel fable, attempting to answer the dangerous revision of New Deal history propagated by Amity Shlaes. The Dream has 8 episodes, linked in a chain from the first. This entry explains the Shlaes connection.